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I Think Comcast May Be Confused

Our OnDemand is more and more frequently acting borked. Specifically, when you press the buttons, nothing happens. The other night the borkage was truly bad, so I called 244-5990 to see what was up. The guy answering the phone asked me if I’d ever used it before and then actually said

“Well, it’s a free service”.

Like I’m supposed to be okay with it not working when I most want it to work because I don’t pay for it directly. Nevermind that I spend more money each month on Comcast than I do on any other utility. Nevermind that when I called to cancel they pointed out that the OnDemand is a service designed to keep my interest and business instead of me switching to The Dish Network. Nevermind that I pay about $10/month on pay-per-view movies delivered through OnDemand.

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Is it all day, or is it at specific times? If so, is it Fri./Sat. around 7-10 pm?

When was the last time the drop running from the pole to your house was changed? How old are the fittings and what type are they that run to your box?

There have been some service interruptions in your area and they are working on expanding the server capacity for On Demand. A few weeks ago, I was in an undisclosed location off of Lebanon Rd. and the On Demand servers were getting slammed in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Another thing you might consider, especially if you’re getting snow or interference on other channels, is that your cabling might be a little lossy, so the box has a harder time connecting to the mothership (and I don’t mean barbeque.)

We bought several of these just last week and swapped out our mish mash of cabling. The result is a marked improvement in our picture quality, and almost no interference from the locals.

By the way, we’re too cheap… we have standard cable and Blockbuster by mail for our “on demand.” :D

There are a lot of folks who want to blame the cable company for their issues, when many times the problem comes from the cable in their house being installed sometime during Reagan’s first term.

Our cable is as old as our house…so, 8 years old.

Another thing you might consider, especially if you’re getting snow or interference on other channels, is that your cabling might be a little lossy, so the box has a harder time connecting to the mothership (and I don’t mean barbeque.)

It’s definitely solely a server issue with OnDemand. We’re not having any cabling issues.

What I thought was funny is that the guy on the phone must have been looking at our records when he was talking to me. Because he started out with “well…OnDemand is free, so deal with it” but then got all “We’re upgrading the servers very soon, ma’am.”

I somehow got the feeling that he looked at how much we spend on OnDemand each month.

By the way, we’re too cheap… we have standard cable and Blockbuster by mail for our “on demand.”

I’m too into the immediate gratification when it comes to TV. Although if I go back to a movie-rental service, it’ll probably be Blockbuster instead of Netflix.

Wow, I guess it all depends on where you live. We have a little sloooowwwdddoowwwn on the On Demand stuff once in a while (getting access to it, not the streaming itself) but that’s about it. Of course, we had a falling tree take out every wire leading to our house last year, and they may have given us all the newest stuff when they replaced the wiring (which they did the very same day — I find Comcast service much better than any cable service in NYC).

Dang, Sarcastro. This is what I love about blogs. You learn something new every day. Kat doesn’t have the ingress problem, but I do. Now, I know how to fix it.

Thanks!

Kat: There a very few companies whose CS departments are knowledgable and helpful (Land’s End is probably the best). One day, comapnies will figure out that the point of interface with customers is probably a good place to put investment dollars and training. Those that do, at least for me, are the ones to do business with. It’s a shame there aren’t more.

A few weeks ago they reworked the cable service in this part of town and now we have digital service and the channels were kind of shifted around. Later all but a few of my channels went out and when I got around to calling Time-Warner to see what happened after a 15 minute wait what I got was a real prissy, gay-sounding, smug jerk of a person.

He informed me that all I had ever had was basic, not expanded basic, and they had audited all of the service in this area and disconnected my service that was not being paid for. The tone of his conversation was that I had no complaint because I had never signed up for expanded basic. “So there, you low life curmudgeon, don’t bother me since you are wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Have you ever noticed that a prissy, self-righteous, gay-sounding, call center person sounds like your ex-wife? I don’t know why but that is an unalterable fact of life. It took me another ten minutes to explain to him that I was willing to pay for expanded basic and please send some one out to hook it up.

I think what we have dealing with cable companies is a failure to communicate, kind of like talking to the French. Kathy, I share your pain.

Kat, you might consider trading in your box, too. We had our digital cable box forever and traded it in last year and a.) got the most awesome new remote ever and b.) seem to have fewer problems.

Also, not to say something nice about cable companies, but has something changed for the better over at Comcast lately? We called to complain about our cable being [screwed] up, as we do probably three or four times a year and they actually refunded us for the days it was messed up.

Kat, you might consider trading in your box, too. We had our digital cable box forever and traded it in last year and a.) got the most awesome new remote ever and b.) seem to have fewer problems.

I’ve wanted to trade in my box for years.

::pauses::

Okay, seriously. The more I think about it, the more I think that’s a really good idea. It does bother me that my current Comcast Remote looks like it came from some 1973 exhibit of What Remote Controls Will Look Like In The Future.

wait, wait…the ghosting in west nashville…we get it BAD mostly during the daytime, but lately much better. It’s worst on ch 4 but also on 2 and 5..the explanation(s) from Comcast is/are lame. Seriously, “the wires get hot and droop” or “you are getting signals from cable and in the air”…WTF? I’ve given up and just turn it off when it happens. Sarcastro, do you know something?
I like On Demand but it is S..L…O…W.. and not user friendly, I had Time Warner’s Scientific American DVR in NY and it was far superior to Motorola.

Yes. You are in fact getting over the air broadcast signals interfering with your cable signal. Poorly shielded cable can act as an antenna. If you have crap cable that you picked up from Walgreens with the push-on fittings, you will get that interference. The technical term is called ‘ingress’.

Instead of lame explanations, tell Comcast that you want a tech to come out and fix it. Use the phrase, “Do I need to escalate this issue to your supervisor.” Very important to throw the word ‘escalate’ around. The chimps that run the call centers are afraid of that word.

If the bad cable is between the pole and the side of your house, it is Comcast’s responsibility to fix. If they come out and you have a bunch of splitters and cheap-ass cable that you bought at the Dollar General causing the problem, you will be charged $34.20.

And there better not be any sniveling about paying the service charge for fixing your weak shit.

By getting rid of the ingress that causes the ghosting, this should also improve your On Demand access.

p.s. Good luck getting AT+T to walk inside your house for less than $100 to fix anything.

Thanks for the advice, Sarcastro. I had someone come out about a year ago, but they sent the same lazy dolt who had earlier brought my DVR and totally creeped me out by lingering, transfixed in front of the TV when it was clearly time for him to leave. I wasn’t sure if he was truly entranced by whatever insipid program was on or if he was quietly waiting to attack me. He did the same thing on his second visit, so I gave up. He may be history by now, so I’ll “escalate” my attempt to get it fixed.

I’m in Forest Hills and got horrible ghosting on 2 (ABC). Since half the shows I really really want to record on TiVo are on ABC (Lost, DH, Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and I think the new Journeyman — oh, and of course General Hospital. shut up. A girl’s got to have her vises, no?)… anyway, since those are the ones I’m most passionate about, it was really starting to piss me off that I had such bad reception. It got to the point where all I had was really bad static. And I don’t want to have to watch Lost through static. I complained enough to my landlord that they complained to Comcast and got us digital.

However, I now have horrible digital reception on ABC; losing the signal to the point of just a black screen with that fun little “this channel should be available shortly” but it never is. An hour of a black screen when I’m expecting GH is not a happy time in my house. Tonight, not only did I not have ABC at all, I didn’t have 4, 5, 6 or 8 either. And my landlord didn’t have CNN.

I think part of our problem is the bad cabling inside the house. I didn’t have this bad of a problem until my landlord spiced the cables in the attic so I could stop having a big black cable running down the attic stairs, across the bedroom floor and into the living room. That’s when ABC got bad.

Btw, Kat, do you have problems with TiVo being really, really slow to change the digital box channel? Or having the digital box get confused if you change channels (surf up or down the “dial”) too fast? Watching television feels so clunky now, with the extra layer of channel changing.

PS — OnDemand is free?? Good lord, when did that happen? And why didn’t somebody tell me??

Apparently, the landlord screwed you over General Hospital-wise. Splices will cause signal loss, which is what it sounds like you are experiencing. Go around to as many places as you can, including the attic, and make sure ALL CONNECTIONS ARE TIGHT. Ideally, you want the cables to be wrench tight (finger tight +1/6 of a turn) everywhere but the box and the TV. At the very least, they should be finger tight.

Did he make the splice with a barrel, or with a splitter? You will lose signal by using a splitter, especially a gold Radio Shack splitter, and having unnecessary lines coming off of the splitter, or by having one of the splitter legs unused.

In this market, about 80% of the material On Demand is free. The PPV movies and specials are about the only things that you would have to pay for.

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